Michael Bay‘s commentaries are great entertainment. He never disappoints with his tracks. He’ll tell you when someone wasn’t doing their job. He’ll tell you when he had to yell. And he’ll always tell you when he was “the first” to use a new camera, government aircraft, or whatever super-expensive new toy he got to play with.

If you want to know how Michael Bay became Michael Bay, these commentaries give you a good idea of how he reached his level of success. While not included in this month’s recommendations, it should go without saying you should listen to the Armageddon and Pearl Harbor audio commentaries. Ben Affleck is on fire in both. The Pearl Harbor track is hours of Affleck making Josh Hartnett giggle.

Since the Transformers franchise is based on a toy created by Hasbro, the movies themselves are basically giant commercials meant to sell action figures to kids and cars to adults. But even beyond that obvious use of product placement, there is still much more shameless and egregious wedging in of brand name products right in front of Michael Bay‘s camera.

Funnily enough, Michael Bay was a commercial director before he became the blockbuster filmmaker who loves to blow shit up on the big screen. Therefore, it should come as no surprise to see that all of Michael Bay’s movies are full of product placement, and a new video attempts to point out every single instance of such commercial activity in a new video.

Watch the round-up of product placement in Michael Bay movies below and try not to buy stuff because of it. Read More »

Without question, one of my favorite parts of my job is the Michael Bay stories. If somebody has worked with him, they usually have a good story to tell. Few filmmakers, if any, direct and act like Michael Bay. He’s one in a million, which is maybe why his movies tend to make hundreds of millions of dollars.

Someone else who has some great stories to tell about Michael Bay? Michael Bay. The filmmaker (and huge dog lover) usually discusses his work and collaborators with candor. His commentaries, for example, are highly entertaining. After listening to all of them and devouring his movie’s extensive bonus features – and having my mind consumed by Bayhem – I decided it was time to compile a list of the best Michael Bay stories…as told by Michael Bay.

Below, get to know the director of Transformers: The Last Knight a little more intimately.

A third Bad Boysfilm has been in development since at least 2009 and every year or so has brought a fresh news item about behind-the-scenes conversations and negotiations and ever-shifting release dates. The project took on new life last June when director Joe Carnahanwas hired to replace Michael Bay, which was quickly followed by news of Bad Boys 3 and Bad Boys 4 arriving in 2017 and 2019. While Carnahan has continued to tease the film on social media, updates have been scarce since then.

That brings us to right now: it seems that Bad Boys 3 has a title that isn’t Bad Boys 3 and a release date that isn’t the previously announced release date. It’s not much, but hey, momentum.

Fans of Michael Bay‘s action comedy franchise Bad Boys got some good news last week when Sony Pictures slated both Bad Boys 3 and Bad Boys 4for release in 2017 and 2019. However, fans may want to keep their hype in check, because their favorite parts of the film series aren’t locked in place for those movies yet.

As of now, fans were counting on seeing Will Smith in Bad Boys 3, and the studio knows he will be involved in some capacity. But there’s a chance that he might only produce the films, and not actually star alongside Martin Lawrence. However, he could just as easily end up doing both. It simply hasn’t been determined what the Suicide Squad star wants to do yet. Read More »

1995 doesn’t feel like it was so very long ago. If you were alive in that era, you probably still remember oohing and ahhing over Toy Story‘s CG-animated surfaces for the very first time, or meeting a brand new 007 in Pierce Brosnan. But in fact, you are wrong. 1995 really was that long ago. At least we still have some favorites of the era to take us back. Even if we’re now streaming them on iTunes instead of popping them into our VCRs.

We’re not saying these are the best films of 1995 — that’s a conversation for another time — but these are the ones that stuck with us. Some because they’ve become reliable favorites, some because they still feel remarkably fresh, and others because they’re so hilariously 1995, they couldn’t possibly have been made at any other time. Join us in revisiting 20 films turning 20 in 2015 after the jump.

Briefly: People have wondered for years why all involved haven’t pulled the trigger on Bad Boys 3 — it seems like such an obvious move in a studio culture that is all about sequels. But this one has, in the past, required the willingness of two stars and a director. That complicates the process.

Now that there’s been a little power structure change at Sony, installing Michael De Luca as production co-president with a mandate to up the quality of the studio’s tentpole films, it looks like that sequel will happen. A writer is almost signed, but that’s just the first step in the process. Read more below. Read More »

Michael Bay may be best known as the guy who blows things up, but like any auteur, he’s got more than one signature move in his bag of tricks. Perhaps his second-favorite tool — after those big, loud, fantastically expensive explosions — is the slow-motion, low-angle, 360-degree shot. You know what I’m talking about: The character, who’s usually recovering from some earlier incident that’s landed him on the ground, looks off into the distance at something alarming and/or horrifying that we can’t see. As he comes to realize that shit has just gotten really real, the camera slowly revolves around him for dramatic effect.

This new supercut pulls together clips of Bay’s favorite shot while revealing what it is that has all these characters so riled up. (Hint: It’s another Bay staple.)